“It’s a wonder the rod didn’t break.”
That’s what Lee Livesay told Andy Crawford when he photographed the 3-pound largemouth that just went into the livewell. The bend on his rod proves the pulling power of a fish weighed down by heavy vegetation.
Livesay is fishing extremely thick and gnarly vegetation that consists mostly of lily pads mixed with hydrilla in a creek. Things are going as planned thus far for the Bassmaster Elite Series pro from this neck of the woods.
“I had a fairly decent practice, caught a couple over 9 pounds,” he told me yesterday. “There are three things going on with the shallow bite, and I like them all.”
Those are concentrating on lily pads with a frog, and flipping the pads and isolated wood cover mixed in with the vegetation. Livesay also told me the lower water (it’s 3 feet below normal) has concentrated the fish in specific areas.
That could be good or bad. Good for drawing out of the thick cover and into a more fishable strike zone, and bad because of the fishing pressure those concentrated areas will create.